Last of Us Drabble Centre
by chelszy
Summary: Set post-game after they've settled in at Tommy's place. A different perspective of Joel and Elle's new life.
1. Drabble 1

Life has been odd recently, to say the least. That was putting it rather mildly. This was as close to a vacation he could have in a post-apocalyptic world, and the inactivity was driving Joel _fucking insane_.

At first, after Tommy gave them the house, he repaired the plumping, the electricity, the appliances (the ceiling fans were the first to get repaired even if they took a hella long time), chopped firewood… hell, he even swept damn floor. Then when he couldn't find anything else to do in the house, he slept. A lot. For a whole week in fact, even took afternoon naps. Even with the dreams, he felt well rested. And now Joel was bored.

It was almost too good to be true. He didn't have to run around quarantine areas doing jobs for ugly green ration cards. They served three meals at the diner here in the middle of settlement, and the steak was the best he'd ever had (that was sayin' something since he mostly ate steak before the outbreak). If you came late enough, you could even have left overs for seconds.

Ellie was around, safe and _alive_. She squealed and and ran home to him every night with some new magazine or book or some new story about a friend – she was finally acting her age, going out the whole day only to come home to bug him in the night.

But most of the time, bored was bad for Joel. Because bored makes his mind wonder. It makes him think about the infected, and the heart tearing sobs they make when they stand with their heads bowed. Bored makes him think about the lives he's taken to survive. Infected are dead inside, he used to tell himself. But a part of him remains unconvinced after hearing so many cries on his travels with Ellie.

And Ellie. Bored makes him think about having _lied_ to Ellie, to his baby girl, and for taking away the chance of a cure from humanity.

For Joel, boredom can send him onto his knees in heavy, gut wrenching guilt.

Face scrunching up in pain, Joel got up abruptly, sending the light wooden chair to the floor. Grabbing a pistol from the kitchen table, he heads out of the house. Tommy should have a job for him to do.


	2. Drabble 2

It was Joel's day off. He hated them with a passion, but Tommy had insisted on it.

So Joel takes the time to clear up junk in his home, and then takes copious amounts of naps in the afternoons.

Last night had been bad. He was not likely to be sleeping this afternoon.

He was done cleaning up before noon. Groaning, he decided to have an early lunch. He tried Ellie's advice about "observing others" (the girl could sit there for hours watching people with a small smile on her face), but found that most people vacated their seats quickly after he looked at them too long.

He discussed the next salvage trip out with Maria when she approached him during lunch ("Whoa there big guy, what'cha glaring at the poor family there for?" – was her greeting statement. Wasn't he just 'observing'?), but she left quickly after a walkie message and he re-entered his home only half past noon. Dang it.

He was walking back to his room to try to get some shut eye when he walked past Ellie's room. She throws the door wide open when she leaves. One glance inside tells him it looks exactly like Sarah's room. It appears that being a kid in a cordyceps infected world doesn't change a thing, teenager's rooms would always remain messy.

He hesitated slightly before walking into Ellie's room. The worse that could happen was Ellie getting angry with an _invasion of privacy_. It was better than trying to fall asleep after last night. With a resigned shake of his head, he starts with making the bed.

An hour later finds Joel gathering and stacking those action magazines he found for Ellie on their travels. They had been strewn all around the room, under the bed, on the bed, hanging out of her open closet… He was flipping through the one of top of the stack when it fell open to a dog-eared page. He gave the images a cursory glance, smirked slightly at the cliché, "She's your daughter, Logan", and flipped to the next page. And the next, and the next…

* * *

Groaning, Ellie put her arms over her head and tried to stretch her sore legs. Riding long distance was tough work. "Phew!"

Valerie grinned at her as she dismounted. She grabbed their catch for the day, cowering at the edge of the cages, away from their captors.

"Caught a good bunch ladies?" The stable man, Ian asked while he took the reins and handed them over the to the staff on duty.

"Yep. We even managed to catch a male."

"We'll be good tryin' to breed them yet. Evenin', ladies."

"I'll drop these off at farm. Today is Joel's day off right?"

"Yeah!" Ellie grinned happily, glad that her friend understood her so well. She got paired off with Valerie shortly after she and Joel arrived, and they usually ran errands for people or helped with the teaching of younger children. Maria eventually noticed they had a knack for hunting, and occasionally sent them out to get small game. The settlement was trying to breed rabbits now, so Ellie and Val had managed to device a new trap to catch them alive and bring them back here. Most of the populations around the area had been decimated by the settlement, so they had to ride a fair distance to find the occupied burrows. All in a day's ride though, and lots of gossips could be exchanged so Ellie wasn't complaining.

"Go get Joel and have dinner with him! Breakfast tomorrow?"

Nodding, Ellie took a quick stroll home. The only light from the windows was from her room. Odd. She probably left it switched on when she left early this morning. Joel was probably asleep.

Deciding to ambush him (an endeavor that initially started out very risky with Joel, but gradually got more fun as he relaxed in this environment), she gently tiptoed up the stairs with a shit-eating grin on her face. Last time she stepped on the creaky second last stair and he was stirring but the time she got there to scare him. This time, she carefully stepped over the stair. At the landing, she gave herself a mental pat on the back before she discreetly made her way towards his room.

She was just past her room door when a glance inside made her freeze midstep.

Joel was asleep on her bed, his torso lying along the width of her now-made bed and his long legs stretched out, resting on her table. He was snoring slightly, his mouth ajar and his face was almost… peaceful. A rush of affection filled Ellie as she watched him breathe. This man, he needed her, perhaps more than humanity needed the cordyceps in her brain for the cure.

An open copy of her favourite comic was resting face down on his chest. He called the comics silly, but collected them for her when he looted anyway. From the back cover, she knew it was the last one in the series. A neat stack sat on the table next to his feet, with the second last copy on top.

She let out a light huff of laughter. She had just caught Joel red-handed, asleep after reading her entire set of silly comics. Damn, what she would give to have a camera right now.

But wait! The grin returned to her face full force. She could give herself an even better treat – Joel's expression after he wakes up knowing that he's caught red handed. She took three deep breaths, _3… 2…1!_ Ellie leapt onto the bed, screaming at the top of her lungs, "YAHHHH!"

* * *

At the diner, the same family from lunch found themselves the object of Joel's attention again, this time, that of his dark angry, death glare on a scowling face. His daughter, Ellie, sat opposite him, giggling in between describing Joel's sleeping forming to his brother Tommy. When she screamed dramatically and put an exaggerated shell-shocked expression on her face, looking guiltily at an imaginary book in her hands, Tommy burst out into deep guffaws that caused Joel's dark expression to swing towards his brother. The family breathed a visible sigh of relief.

"That was brilliant, Ellie! Fucking brilliant! If we still had phones this would have been a great blackmail moment." He gasped, and lapsed into another moment of loud laughter. Ellie was curled up against the table by this point, clutching her stomach as she laughed soundlessly.

Joel's expression could have burned a bloater. He hates off days, period.

 **A.N: Drabbles are what happen when I finish Last of Us while procrastinating and listening to the soundtrack. Damn the feels. The quotation from the comic was copied off a recent movie I watched, not difficult to guess which one. There might or might not be more after this. I'll see how it goes.**


End file.
